Maggie lied & said I was a poet.

Nolan's friend Maggie invited me to join her for a day at the school where she works. The plan was I'd go & we'd figure out a plan. We went into the conference room to take this very seriously. It was decided that we have the kids make acrostic poems of their names using English adjectives. (Adjective: a word or phrase name an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it).Maggie & I walked around campus discussing our plan of action. Let me just remind you that this is Japan; we are wearing slippers in school. At least, I am. Maggie has some respectable shoes specific to walking in school. I had to look like Peg Bundy all day. Btw, this whole peace sign thing has nothing to do with me becoming a hippie & everything to do with Japanese culture: this is their cheese (or chizu in Japanese). So back to the whole obnoxious thing I did earlier when I defined the word adjective: Japanese middle school students didn't fully grasp this... they went more for the "let's make a perfect poster of my name & then write the first word in the dictionary that isn't offensive" attitude. Example:

Y: young
U: umbrella
K: kitten
I: I

But I joke. It was a lot of fun & the kids were super cute. I spoke too fast for them & they stared at me with their drool mouths. Occasionally girls came up to me to shake my hand & I would smile & give Maggie a weird look, until she spoke out of the corner of her mouth, "I told them you were a famous American poet & they want to shake your hand..." Thanks for having faith in me, Maggie.










The day progressed & it was time for lunch. Maggie said, "Not to worry. There will be lunch for you & I'll give you my vegetables & you can give me your hamburger." So as it turns out, there were no veggies, just salty fish flakes. I tried them & did not agree with the taste. I ate rice & soup (which had a chicken base, but rather than be rude, I chugged that f-er down & ate as much rice as I could so as not to throw up). Asai Sensei said, "You can use chopsticks?" Nolan told me later that night that saying, "Can you use a fork?" is an inappropriate response. I'm glad I didn't whip that johnson out...

After four classes, the principal wanted to meet me. I wasn't sure exactly why the principal cared so vehemently about my presence, but when I sat down Maggie told me through the side of her mumbling mouth, "I told him you were working on a book." I shook the man's hand & accepted his business card with two of my own, as per Maggie's secret, mumbled instructions. It was a serious great time. We had lots of serious fun. And when the day was over, I swiveled around in Maggie's chair & read.

The Longest Heart Attack

This quiet smells of singed hair & gasoline
kept still in pails. My wheels scream
like rabbits & it’s only the noise. The places
I go have passed— your slick hair,

my burnt dog, a dead house. These bones
are gravestones & I’ve stopped playing.
The longest heart attack is this lake,
this small ocean of snow & my nose

drips a foreign liquor no one can drink.
I’ll show you this all if you bring
any hanky of heart, a bone-colored cotton—
the same as my worn skin. I lay my tangram

skeleton on the shore but the waves aren’t
human enough to wash away. Everyone watches
the heart attack but I am not dubbed; I am a lit
building spitting codes of alphabet to false-ears.

At least we didn't sleep outisde.

Sarah & her friend Maisie came to visit for a week & we went to Kyoto to rage. Or, spend way too much money on nothing... At the train station in Kyoto, we saw an Italian marching band. They were wearing sexy white tights & we stared at them, giggling. They were kinda hot...

We made out way to the outskirts of Kyoto to check out an open air market where we purchased Xmas gifts. This guy was making fish cookies filled with red bean paste. I don't like red bean paste. I like Mexican rice & beans, ok?










We ate lunch at an Italian place to honor our hot, tights-wearing marching band.

This is my friend. I forgot his name. We passed Nolan's phrase book back & forth in order to have a conversation. I asked him in Japanese if he would meet my parents. He laughed & told me he loved me. We almost got married, Japanese-style. (Just kidding, Jess.) The only serious thing I got out of the conversation is that Zima is very popular in Japan.
DISGUSTING!!!


This is a great example of the names of bars and/or clubs in Kyoto. Maybe new club? Seriously. The best part is we walked around the bar district for a while trying to find an oldman bar & would be like, "Ohh, Persian Cat sounds great," or, "Let's try Dracula's Dungeon," but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter which bar name sounds the best; they are all exactly the same.

Finally, after hitting up like 12,000 expensive bars, we went to karaoke, Japanese-style. This is my first time. We say Mariah Carey, Jesse's Girl, Madonna. This Friday we're doing karaoke again, only it's going to be a Journey-themed night.














This is prob the best picture ever taken of Nolan. He looks like he's having a hard time, no?These two actually have good voices, so they annoyed me. Brenda is too funny to live on a Japanese island all by herself.

After karaoke (at about 3am), we had no choice but to go to an all-night internet cafe to sleep because all the hostels were booked, being Thanksgiving weekend. It was better than sleeping outside, in a squatter, or an outhouse. And it was warm. We awoke at 6 am to get breakfast & drop Brenda off so she could take a bullet train home. We then explored the more historic part of town.
By historic, I meant expensive cars that we posed near.






















This is actually temple grounds (I forgot the name) that have been nominated for the Seven New Wonders of the World. I didn't take that many photos because it was too magnificent & the photos just looked like cheap metaphors you can buy at the 100 yen shop.

























































































This is kind of f-ed up. This is an abortion shrine type of thing. When a woman has an abortion, it's common for her to buy a doll & place it in one of these temples. Abortion seems to be a more common method of birth control than the pill or condoms in Japan

On the way home, we were all pretty burnt out. We got back to Nolan's & vegged out for the rest of the day. I fell asleep under the kotatsu, which was a lil weird.

A Different Day, A Different Moustache

While Nolan went to work, Brenda & I decided to shock the Japanese by wearing moustaches on the train to Nara. Yes, Brenda is drinking a juice-box of sake.






























We are excellent at making friends. When we got off the train, we looked for a place to eat lunch, but everything had gross fish broth, so we wandered into this trashy-looking restaurant owned by a Chinese-Japanese guy who spoke English pretty well. I told him I am a bijetarian & he told me he couldn't promise the taste, but he would make me something special. It was SO good. He's a great man.


This is the beginning of cultural Nara. We had to walk through the amazing crap-shop district to get here, & some crazy Japanese photographer saw me dancing by this pond & called us over. He made us sit down & take a picture with this old Japanese bald man, whom he called a skinhead. It was kind of awesome.



















You can see the top of a five-tiered pagoda in the distance, which is totally bizarre. These pictures, btw, don't do justice to anything I've seen so far. Even the moustache pics are blurry.






Here's an example of a crap-shop:















This guy was making traditional Japanese desserts. I think they're made of rice. The machine kind of pooped out the pastries.


So in Nara, deer are considered sacred & they roam around. You can buy these deer cookies for 150 yen, but once the deer see that you have purchased this, they f-ing stampede over to you & head butt you until you show them the cookies are gone. Some of the deer had weird scabs on their heads & this one had a terrible limp. This other old guy followed Brenda & me around hissing at us. I was a little scared.




































This deer was pretty tame. Brenda took an amazing video of when the deer attacked me.

















This guy is a Shinto priest. Look at him pretending to be Laura Ingles Wilder. Here I am looking all Laura Ingles Wilder. That priest was just copying me.








Brenda running away backwards as she gives a cookie to the deer. If you ever go to Nara & feed the deer, DO NOT wear a skirt because they will stick their heads up it if you don't give them food.








This is the five tiered pagoda on the Todaiji Temple grounds. I was wrong about the other temple housing a shard of the Buddha's bone; it's actually this pagoda. It's only open once a year for viewing.


















This is Todaiji Temple, the largest wooden structure in the world. It's magnificent. Also, it does not translate as a photograph.

This Buddha is amazing, it's the largest bronze sculpture in the world, bigger than the house I grew up in, I swear. Also does not translate as a photograph. The architecture is amazing
































This is the interior architecture of the Todaiji Temple. Incredible.











Little Red Riding Hood Buddha.






On our way home, we picked up some biiru for the train & fixed ourselves some new moustaches. I had to pee the whole time & the train took forever because there was an accident/suicide. It took us all in all 3 hours to get home. I held my pee the whole time & considered being the gaijin that peed on the train.